As a Jewish student, my people have lived through numerous periods of persecution, imprisonment, deportations and violence for our beliefs. It happened in my own family — my great-great-grandfather having been killed in the streets for his Judaism by the Russian army at the end of World War I circa 1920. Stories like my great-great-grandfather’s prompt people who are suffering to come to the United States, a land of free expression and political practice.

But at present, President Donald Trump is trying to use my people as a pretext to repeat our history of persecution, unjustly targeting foreign-born political dissidents due to his own prejudice. Many Jews, myself included, do not want that unjust veil of responsibility put upon us — which presents a reason for others to target American Jews. 

The White House says that this agenda, enacted through an executive order, seeks to “combat anti-Semitism vigorously, using all available and appropriate legal tools, to prosecute, remove or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.” The mission of eliminating antisemitism in the United States is one that I share, but Trump’s process of carrying out this goal is deeply flawed and disingenuous. 

Most of the students that immigration enforcement officials have recently rounded up at Trump’s direction — like Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, who negotiated with the school’s administration during the pro-Palestinian encampment over the war in Gaza last spring — have engaged in no such unlawful activity and have seemingly been targeted because of their racial background, citizenship status and the substance of their speech. 

When white nationalists carrying Nazi flags and other symbols of antisemitic groups ran over, berated and harmed counterprotesters at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump refused to condone the anti-Jewish hate, stating there were “very fine people” on both sides. The major difference between Trump’s response to Charlottesville and his current crackdowns are that many perpetrators are not white, weren’t born here and don’t share the same abject racism that Trump does. It was never about protecting the Jews for Trump because he had the opportunity to years ago and did not.

Have pro-Palestinian student protesters’ behavior been uncomfortable, scary and intimidating for myself and many American Jews? Absolutely. But there is a difference between discomfort and illegality. Secretary of State Marco Rubio himself stated that Khalil’s conduct is not illegal — it simply aligns with the Trump administration’s current definition of antisemitism, making it subject to their crackdown. Khalil engaged in free speech, assembly and protest, all freedoms ensured under the First Amendment. From all of the evidence publicly available, Khalil would not be facing deportation had he been protesting a different issue and been of a different racial background or citizenship status. And he is not the only person who has been subject to these politically motivated arrests — there are already at least four other students who immigration enforcement officials have detained using the same rationale over the last few weeks.

The federal government is also cutting funding at universities due to concerns that the schools didn’t appropriately address antisemitism and adopt Trump’s political goals. These slashes hurt all students, not just those who were on the frontlines of pro-Palestinian protests. Jewish students at schools like GW, which has a 27 percent Jewish population, may now feel retribution from their classmates due to Trump’s purported efforts to combat antisemitism. While he frames it as protection, the president’s removal of his dissidents sets up a reality in which Jewish people could be seen as the reason for his unjust crackdowns instead of Trump’s efforts to further his personal agenda.

Rates of antisemitism have increased over the last 10 years in the United States, and antisemitic incidents in the country rose by 360 percent over three months after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, in part due to increases in white-nationalist propaganda, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Jewish people have faced oppression from around the world — from Europe to the Middle East to the United States, from the Roman times to the 1900s to now — for ever-changing and always-proliferating reasons. The reality is that this oppression will not go away overnight, and Trump’s current approach to eliminating this oppression is likely going to make things worse for Jews in this country.

Dividing the country along partisan lines is one thing, but Trump’s own anti-immigration and free speech agenda is also uniting antisemitic people and targets of his administration to view Jewish people as the enemy. This will make people more violent and radical, a problem that will become evident when people start to channel their anger toward our community. Many of us did not ask for the government to censor and systematically deport pro-Palestinian protesters.

Aesop once wrote that “a tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.” American Jewry cannot be used as the pretext that Trump needs to fulfill his own tyrannical agenda — one of anti-immigrant hate and the persecution of those who disagree with him.

I am a Jew who has felt scared and at times harassed on campus by people protesting the war in Gaza. I wish people were kinder to Jews in this country and that they realized that American Jews shouldn’t be blamed for a war 6,000 miles away.

But I am also an American, and as Americans, we shouldn’t condone the arrest, deportation or persecution of anyone for practicing free speech. At GW, we take classes on civil rights and liberties, freedom and the dangers of an over-involved government. As students and as a community, we cannot condone this present political action.